Regulations

An exemption request from the American Trucking Associations that would allow drivers to exclude detention time at a natural gas or oil well site from their total 14 on-duty hours has been denied by the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration.

Approximately 75,000 inspections occur each year during the Roadcheck inspection blitz, done by a joint effort of the Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance, Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration and others. Here are the dates for this year's Roadcheck.

Regarding its "CSA-e" re-engineering of CSA percentiles, SaferWatch raises the specter of negligence lawsuits for brokers not utilizing available information assessing risks when selecting carriers -- but if Congress and so many others are right, it's never been a better time to stop such use altogether.

FMCSA has received an exemption request from ArcelorMittal-Indiana Harbor, asking that its truck operators be able to have 16 on-duty hours once starting their clock and be allowed to return to work with fewer than 10 consecutive hours off duty. The drivers in question only operate vehicles in and around the plant, the company says.

“It is irresponsible and inconceivable that FMCSA would use the same data and analysis Congress said is faulty in a new safety fitness determination," the lawmakers write in their letter. The letter comes in response to requests by industry groups to halt FMCSA's Safety Fitness rule pending a CSA revamp.

It’s easy to conjure a scenario of total on-highway enforcement of truck and driver regulations, enabled by a nationwide rollout of vehicle-to-infrastructure wireless communications. Growing industry adoption of telematics systems, work by FMCSA to ramp up wireless inspections and several other trends could lead to such a national system in the coming decades.

The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration announced this week it now accepts Mexico’s criteria for annual inspection of trucks domiciled there after concluding its inspection standards were comparable to the United States.

Technological advances over the next two to three decades could massage one of owner-operators’ biggest pain points: hours of service regulations seen as too restrictive for truckers’ productivity and too rigid for their highly variable schedules. Equipment innovations could play into the industry’s interest in either extending drivers’ on-duty time or allowing greater flexibility in divvying it up.

Whether the future landscape of greater risk translates to a boon for the future generations of owner-operators willing to assume the risk themselves as independents, or not, is one of many areas discussed in this podcast conversation with current owner/former operator Gary Carlisle.

The DOT pushed back the projected publication date of a rule to require speed limiters on heavy-duty trucks to April 22. A rule to implement a CDL Drug and Alcohol Clearinghouse is now projected to be published on July 28.